Unfortunately, Roblox has wrongfully taken down my game for the third time after I complied with their rules and removed all alcoholic/illicit references.
My game is called The Garrison. The game had no issues until the 17+ program was released. We decided to remove ‘illicit content (drinks)’ and Roblox are still targeting us without specifying the models that apparently violate their terms. Roblox interns have played our game in the past and have had 0 issues, I don’t see why they have issues at this present day.
I hope this issue can be resolved ASAP as I have a community waiting for the game to return on the platform.
I would appreciate it if someone from the Developer Relations team can assist us.
Roblox moderation can be pretty insane at times. I just recommend getting support from the appeal/support page. I hope that your game returns in good shape. Just try to bear with the poor moderation. If you’ve done everything you can to make sure a ban doesn’t happen, but it still does, try not to take it personally as Roblox is not intentionally targeting your game. Just poor moderation. If Roblox really is targeting your game, then it must be for a reason that Roblox sees, and you and your team most likely have overlooked on accident.
In the trailer, I saw that some of the drinks looked like they could be alcoholic (even though it says that all drinks are soft drinks in the description)
For example: a pint could refer to a pint of beer, which might be a reason why Roblox suspended your game for review.
Make sure to make it clear that the drinks are non-alcoholic in the game, and give them names that sound less like alcoholic drinks (like Iced tea, etc.).
The odd thing is, before the 17+ age group was introduced on Roblox, the game was doing well without any restrictions, now all of a sudden, Roblox are trying to get me to change my target audience to the older demographic.
It might be a way to promote making 17+ experiences on the platform. I’m surprised that Roblox would be pushing this, considering the lawsuit they got into about child gambling.
Exactly, that’s what I think. The funny thing is that alcohol is 18+ in most countries so why is this new age rating 17+? It makes zero sense, Roblox should promote their new genres in other ways instead of ruining experiences for others.
What makes it worse is that there are several other games on the platform that have the same concept as ours. However, I am hesitant to list those games below due to fear that they’ll also get falsely taken down. I especially care about the vintage-bar genre due to its allowance of people from many different cultures being able to hangout. The game had no intentions to refer to alcohol, it was clearly stated in our description that all drinks are soft drinks.
These issues have been pretty common throughout the platform since 17+ has came out. One thing I have noticed is that Roblox has been thoroughly pushing strict regulations on the 13+ rated games in general. This may be because Roblox wants to weed out any “leftover” 13+ games that may even remotely fall into the 17+ category.
As for Roblox’s poor support, this is how it always has been, Developer Relations has nothing to do with case-by-case moderation support, and the general appeal process and support is terrible.
My recommendation is to skim your assets for any potentially flagged names, models, etc… and completely remove them. You should also skim your scripts for any flagged names, instance referencing, and other things as Roblox can view lua containers and has banned me for using “Discriminatory Assets” for simply referencing an alcohol-like drink name in a script. Once you’ve done that, Id reach back out.
I am personally disappointed with Roblox. It seems like moderators have their own personal opinions on whether a game is against their guidelines or not.
Some moderators believe it’s fine and reactivate my game, whilst others take a lot of time to respond and are under complete denial.